Posted
by
timothy
on Friday May 27, 2011 @11:26PM
from the ghost-of-christmas-past dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In what seems to be a desperate attempt to keep the company afloat, RadioShack has made a video appeal to the DIY community that helped the retail chain grow into what it is today. The days of amateur radio operators and tinkerers flocking to the store are long gone, but it seems that the company wants to issue a mea culpa and move forward."

Elk River has nothing but drunks and rednecks. What do they need DIY equipment for?

I grew up in a small town full of drunks and rednecks, and there were a lot of DIYers and folks with interesting hobbies. (I need to look up the model rocketry hobbyist who helped me win a competition among my high school science class for self-propelled ground vehicles[1] -- that was a lot of fun, though I understand they revised the rules for future years to close the loophole we leveraged).

Your local shack doesn't carry components? Is it in a mall or other high-rent area where space is expensive?It's not nearly as apparent as it once was, but the local store here has a limited selection of components. Rather than a wall of pegs filled with components on cards as in days of old (the early 90s for me), they're now condensed down to a chest of compartmented drawers.

My main complaint is selection. When I go on Mouser or Digikey, 9 times out of 10 I end up with 50+ nearly identical components matching my search criteria. When I go to radio shack, I find one or two components (if I'm lucky) that share some general characteristic with what I'm looking for, but not enough so to be workable.Just today I went in there wishfully looking for test leads to hook up to the BNC jacks on my new function generator. They had 5 different flavors of twist-on and 2 flavors of compression connectors for coax, a handful of adapters and a couple of Ts. It all seemed to be geared toward making cables or hooking them up to existing products. I seem to recall seeing a BNC to banana/binding post adapter there at some point in the past, but no such luck now. I ended up leaving with a set of push-release speaker terminals which I'm now working on mounting to my breadboard's backing plate along side a pair of BNC sockets I scrounged off some old attachmate cards. It's for the better I guess... Radio Shack probably would have charged me 5x the price that I found online.

Radio Shacks have been hit or miss. One thing you can do is check the RS web site, do a search and it can usually tell you whether any of the local stores stock something you can use. That way, you're leveraging their local inventory with the internet, you go to the store that has it and get it locally much sooner.

While Radio Shack will never really compete with online warehouses, it does seem like they could do better. I think part of the problem is being a retailer of limited space competing against "long tail" internet sellers. The increasingly high cost of retail frontage isn't helping either, every peg and every tray needs to turn over a certain amount of money per year. $20 cell phone holsters and chargers probably do a better job of that for them than odd $1 electronic components. It does look pretty sad to see a drawer tray with components in old style and, yellowing packages. I find that the local stores are unlikely to have what I need. In some ways, I felt like I was ending up like my own small parts retailer, whenever I order, I'd often buy extras and variations so I'd have them on hand in case I ever needed them.

One thing you can do is check the RS web site, do a search and it can usually tell you whether any of the local stores stock something you can use. That way, you're leveraging their local inventory with the internet, you go to the store that has it and get it locally much sooner

Funny you should mention "leveraging their website".

Last night, I was trying to do JUST THAT, looking for some sort of power supervisor, or even an HC gate package I could use to fashion a reasonable Power-On-Reset circuit for a friend's Buffalo NAS (let's not devolve into a discussion of POR circuits, please! Suffice it to say, I figured out another way, ok?)

I have fond memories of going to Radio Shack to find components for some little project, or components to build some sort of weird audio adapter; but no more. Now, there's no choice but to go to DigiKey and Mouser, and figure out how I'm going to meet their minimum order requirements, when all I wanted was $5 worth of stuff. Actually, unless it has changed in the past couple of years, I have found that Fry's actually has a pretty respectable (by comparison) variety of electronic components. Heck, last I was in there (they are about 25 miles away, on the other side of town), they even sold stuff like soldering stations and (IIRC) and some high-end (Fluke?) multimeters and stuff.

Now, there's no choice but to go to DigiKey and Mouser, and figure out how I'm going to meet their minimum order requirements, when all I wanted was $5 worth of stuff.

Poo to that! There are a ton of small shops on the 'net that cater to enthusiasts and will sell small quantities of components to you quite happily.

http://www.sparkfun.com/

http://www.makershed.com/

http://store.fungizmos.com/

http://www.adafruit.com/

Though for bread & butter components that I am going to use pretty regularly, I'll buy those on eBay. Mostly from Chinese sellers but sometimes there are some stateside sellers competing for your business. Most of the time I get my components in from China within a week or two. I've actually had them beat Sparkfun to my mailbox when I place orders on the same day. Sometimes things get held up and you can wait a few weeks. So don't be in a rush if you go the eBay/China route.

>"$20 cell phone holsters and chargers probably do a better job of that for them than odd $1 electronic components"

Yeah, but RS doesn't SELL any "$1 components". They sell $3+ components. So not only is the selection of components poor (which has been my chief complaint over the last 20 years) but they charge a huge premium for everything.

One strategy they should use would be to have at least ONE store in each market zone that is dedicated to nothing but components and located in a lower-rent (non-mall/strip) area. There are probably 20 RS stores here, within reasonable driving distance...

And the switch selection is directed towards the ricer wannabe kids. I dont want chrome blue painted jet fighter toggle switches or the other butt ugly Ricer R-type crap they stock. Only losers and posers put that crap in their car. Plus the quality is so bad that you can feel the switch wanting to fall apart in your hand. Mosst of the pushbuttons are garbage, etc....

the ones that have been rebranded 'The Source by Circuit City' in Canada still sell a modest range of components and miscellaneous useful adapters and cables and so on at decent prices. Nothing like as decent a range as Maplins in the UK, but better than the big box electronics stores.

The one in my local mall has a couple of perf boards, some hookup wire, and a small selection of LEDs. No ICs. No transistors or other components. It's pathetic. Unfortunately, the nearest real electronics store is at least an hour and a half away by bus (and two fares) one way.

Maplin are pretty crap compared to what they used to be like. They used to have thick catalogues full of all kinds of bits - not just electronic components but servos, motors, gearboxes and bits for building organs and synthesizers like keyboard assemblies, leslie speakers and even flat-pack wooden cabinets. The catalogue often had a page or so devoted to a particular IC (three or four pages, for the ubiquitous AY-3-891x family) showing example circuits and technical information.

the ones that have been rebranded 'The Source by Circuit City' in Canada still sell a modest range of components and miscellaneous useful adapters and cables and so on at decent prices. Nothing like as decent a range as Maplins in the UK, but better than the big box electronics stores.

Actually, they're neither Radio Shack or Circuit City operations in Canada.

They're owned by Bell Canada; Circuit City USA went bankrupt and in 2009 Bell bought the Canadian assets of The Source from Circuit City, which were still profitable and a viable operation, and operated by a Circuit City subsidiary, a company called InterTAN.

InterTAN was formed from the former Canadian operations of Tandy/Radio Shack... don't know the exact date, but think 20 years or so, when Tandy USA spun off and sold them to Canadian investors. If you dig through your parts bin, you definitely have to go a long way back to find the Tandy Radio Shack name in the small print on the back of the package if you bought it in Canada; for many people, all they will have will be marked InterTAN instead, even if it says Radio Shack on the front.

There was a licensing agreement to use the Radio Shack name, however, as part of the deal. When Circuit City bought InterTAN in 2004, that licensing agreement was declared invalid (after a lawsuit, by Radio Shack USA, of course) in 2005. Thus the rename to "The Source by Circuit City".

Technically now they're called "The Source (Bell Electronics, Inc)". Some stores, however, to this day retain the old branding with the "The Source by Circuit City" name on the outside signage. You could probably chalk that up to Bell being cheap more than anything else.

InterTAN, which is still based in Barrie, Ontario, was created out of a big part of the "old" Radio Shack operation in Barrie, which was responsible for sourcing components offshore and commissioning the Radio Shack branded parts, like Archer, Realistic, etc, and warehousing and distributing stock for North America. It was sold by Radio Shack's parent company, I believe which is Tandy, and renamed InterTAN at that time.

So, there hasn't been a true Radio Shack in Canada for many years, and although the two companies have been independent for a very long time, there was some relationship that saw the same products in both stores, but also they differed with each offering unique products not available to the other. Although there is some relevance because there are similarities between the two national companies product mix and target customers, for the most part this/. submission has nothing to do with the Canadian situation.

Since they're now owned by one of Canada's largest cellular phone networks, it's hardly surprising that the phones are prominently marketed in the stores in Canada.

Radio Shack doesn't sell tips for their Weller soldering gun through stores, either. They also don't sell it on their online store, but there's a part number in their system for it, which means they can order it for you. I guess, the number of people who buy new tips is small enough that they don't bother to stock them. I mean, how often do you replace tips? By the time you need your first replacement, the iron is usually a decade old....

No kidding. I've been to my local Shack numerous times over the last fer years looking for parts, like enclosures, crossovers, resisters, etc. I always end up driving 30 miles to Fry's. RS sucks now. I have no idea how they stay in business.

I usually find Fry's and RS's selection to be complementary. Fry's has cheaper parts, but there are a fair number of things that RS carries, but Fry's doesn't. For example, unless they've added it recently, Fry's doesn't carry the ubiquitous 555 timer IC. They also don't stock certain small values of film caps that I use regularly. Radio Shack has both.

I find this irritating as well, but I came up with a better solution than telling the to go to hell. When they ask for my personal information, I give them a fake name and the address of a porn shop downtown. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to imagine one of these people calling up the number I gave them and asking for a Mr. Hugh Jass.

It was a vestigial policy from their days as a mail order company. As far as I know they always honored their pledge to not share your information with anyone. They weren't treating anyone like a felon and, frankly, you should fucking go to hell for saying that they did. Apparently you're too paranoid to even post under a nickname.

Radio Shack is an old company which has successfully reinvented itself several times. Brick and Mortar chains like Egghead and Circuit City come and go but Radio Shack soldier

That commercial is basically asking "How can we make ourselves look like a DIY store without actually a DIY store".They're so far out of the game that they have to ask outsiders to label the products that might be used for DIY.

I would SWEAR she says dipshit instead of dipswitch... she's a "brand manager" so not a techie. Now had they actually used an engineer or even better a real DIY'er then maybe they'd make some traction. sigh.

I think while analog electronics and amateur radio are fading (though I think ham is gonna be the last great true geek hobby for some time), I think digital electronics will see an upsurge.

I think the question really is whether it's viable in a brick and mortar model. Very hard to compete with digikey and mouser, especially in areas (like here in Atlantic Canada) with low population density. I'd love to not have to wait a week for that one little $2 component... but realistically I just don't see it as via

If they're smart, they'll look into new personal hacking systems like Arduino, they'll get back into home automation, and they'll position themselves as the place to get all of the stuff needed to tie differing systems together. They also need to keep later hours Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, when the hobbyist has screwed something up and needs some replacement parts.

Ideally Radio Shack, in my opinion, should be the convenience store of electronics. One needs something at odd hours, or needs one or two of something, or needs to make the shopping trip quick and fairly painless, go to Radio Shack.

I've had really odd finds in there. I have an old Realistic HTX-100 that was given to me without a handmic, they still had the connector for me to add to another that I have, as well as the power harness stub. In a fairly new store. They need to carry truly geeky toys, the kinds of things carried at Harbor Freight but better quality, and the kinds of things sold at Fry's Electronics, but without the hassle and bad employee morale. They should carry model rocketry launch stuff (though not really the rockets themselves) like launchers, controllers, altitude and GPS trackers, homing beacons, and that sort. They should carry the electronics for entry level to mid level RC, but not the car or plane body kits. They should carry the most common bulbs for projectors and televisions, even if only one or two in a store, and they should have a nice thick, Grainger-style catalog for ordering all kinds of other things that's actually easy to use and peruse. They should carry basic electronics how-to books, so geeklings can learn how to do what they will.

They should carry a lot less in the line of cell phones.

Funny enough, they used to have this store, it was called "Tech America". They created it after they lost their Incredible Universe business (ingloriously bought out by Fry's here in the Phoenix area) and then they failed at that. In that case they had a little too much in-store, so their inventory overhead was way too high, but pick something half-way. Carry enough of the components to make geeks have a reason to come in, but not so much that one closes. If we need EVERYTHING then we'll order it. If we need one of something small and cheap we'll probably be willing to pay a lot more for that one thing if we can get it immediately and at late hours.

One sensible inventory compromise: instead of spreading out a thin inventory across hundreds of stores, designate a few stores per metro area as regional parts superstores that stock "everything" a hardcore Arduino enthusiast or bot-builder would be likely to need on short notice over the course of a weekend. Using South Florida as an example, I'd start with store #1 at Sawgrass Mills (less than an hour away from ~90% of Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties as long as it's not rush hour). I'd put stores #2 and #3 at Dolphin Mall (~6 miles west of Miami International Airport, roughly 20-30 minutes from most of Dade County) and near I-95 & Palm Beach International Airport. (ok, those are actually the locations where I'd put hypothetical Fry's stores, but it's the same market). Later, if I could add one or two more stores, I'd put #4 at Aventura, and #5 somewhere off I-95 between Pompano Beach and Oakland Park (at which point most of South Florida would have a store within a 15-20 minute drive).

Of course, there's my wet-dream fantasy: a PC board milling machine at those stores where you could swipe your credit card, plug in a USB drive, select the Eagle CAD files, and watch it mill your board (say, $10 for a 2" x 4" board, $20 for a 3" x 5" board, and $25 for a 4" x 6" board) on the spot.

One thing Radio shack needs to do, and do NOW: start selling Circuit Cellar, Nuts & Volts, Servo, and every magazine like them that it can get its hands on... and work closely with all of them to get them to publish projects built from parts available at the local Radio Shack store (working both ways... adding inventory to accommodate upcoming projects likely to be popular, and encouraging them to use the parts they already sell when possible). Then, hire Joe Pardue to walk in the footsteps of Forrest Mims, and write his own series of books full of projects that can be built entirely from parts available at Radio Shack.

The truth is, the group that used to be into ham radio never really went away... it's just that Radio Shack didn't notice that TODAY, that group builds robots and projects based on microcontrollers & FPGAs. Robots, in particular, are a goldmine for store like Radio Shack. I can't think of any single hobby that gives 20/30/40-something guys more of an excuse to burn through cash like there's no tomorrow. PC components might be cutthroat, with negative retail profit margins, but check out the markup on something like a Robotis AX-12 digital servo... ~$45 mail order. For each one. A decent 'bot is going to have at least a half dozen. A biped? About a dozen. A stair-climbing hexapod? Good god, I think the credit card machine just melted;-)

Those ardunio fanatics still need analog components. You can't make one of those chips do anything without a power supply, audio output will always require a transistor or two, and no button input is going to do it's thing without a pull-up or pull-down resistor.

As an embedded developer with over 30 years of experience, I couldn't DISagree more.

Especially if you deal in the world of real-time measurement and control, you will find that, for every microcontroller you place in a design, there will typically be 8 to 16 op-amp "sections" (usually in dual/quad packages) used as "buffers", active filters, etc., and several "passive" (analog) components. For example, to turn a PWM signal with 16-bit accuracy coming out of your microcontroller into an analog signal with a even just 12-bit accuracy (worst-case "ripple" being, of course, at 50% duty cycle), you need a minimum of a three-stage active Butterworth filter, requiring no less than 2 op amp sections, and several resistors and capacitors. Yes, you can use a D/A converter; but that usually isn't nearly as cost-effective, and usually carries its own group of voltage-reference ICs, passives to make the voltage-reference "stable" and "quiet" enough, plus op-amp output buffers, etc. All of those are ANALOG components.

Look at the catalogs of companies that make a good selection of both analog and digital semiconductors, like ST Microelectronics, or even better, Texas Instruments. Their analog offerings are as wide (and perhaps even wider) than their digital offerings. Ever wonder why that is? See the above.

I agree if you spend your time looking at Atmel, Cypress, Freescale or the like, you might get the impression that "analog is dead"; but nothing could be further from the truth. Heck, even Microchip has quite a nice selection of Analog, and Analog Interface, components. And companies like Analog Devices (and to a lesser extent, Maxim), have made an entire business model out of straddling that Analog/Digital "threshold".

So, as long as we continue to live in an an analog universe, there will always be the necessity for getting analog signals into, and out of, that DSP or microcontroller chip, or into/out-of that Data Acquisition and Control system. Period.

The only reason I'd ever go to a Radio Shack is the same reason I'd go to a Best Buy - I'm desperate and I need something RIGHT NOW and it can't wait 48hrs for me to order it online and have it shipped to my door.

Oh I know that pain. Where I live (Atlantic Canada), you can't get much in less than a week. Nothing like forking out twice as much money for something half as good so you can finish a project over the weekend. It fills me with rage every time I do it:(

There was plenty of DIYs around. Well at least in Canada anyway. But, radioshack got shoved to the dirt when their competitors(usually smaller places with better stock, and cheaper prices) out did them. About 30mins from my hometown there's a major DIY shop that carries just about every thing electrical you need. And what they don't have, they can get within 24-48hrs for you.

Price is another example. Simple 10 pack of 10ohm resistors were $8 at the shack, and $2.49 at another shop. Most of the time, even if you were driving 30mins you saved money. This is all 4-6 years past of course, but radioshack killed itself, by overcharging on everything. I mean really $4 for a red LED? What? I can by them for $0.18/c elsewhere.

As I look, right now, resistors at Radio Shack are selling for $1.19 in packs of 5.

Myself, I bought a giant bag of 1/8 Watt resistors (500 or so of them) from Radio Shack a few years ago, of widely mixed values (and with larger quantities of more common ones, and fewer quantities of less common ones).

IIRC, it wasn't all that expensive. I haven't bought any resistors since -- whatever I need, within reason, I can build out of that stock.

My biggest complaint, these days, is not that they don't have what I wa

Those prices are a lot higher than I've seen, maybe RS Canada was getting too big for their own good. In my area, it was $1 USD for a 5pk of resistors. A lot, but not nearly as bad as your example. It's good in a pinch, but eventually gets hard to justify when I could get 100pcs. for $1.

"Price is another example. Simple 10 pack of 10ohm resistors were $8 at the shack, and $2.49 at another shop. Most of the time, even if you were driving 30mins you saved money."

One of the things Rat Shack sometimes did well was have a fair stock of various bits and pieces close by to many people. There's significantly higher overhead to that, so there will be higher prices. And it's lucrative to charge people for the convenience. "Convenience store service, convenience store prices". Your corner store will mark up their soda a lot more than a warehouse club, too, but it's the difference between 5 min and 30 min. When people are in a hurry, that's when they go to such places.

There's a local electronics hobby shop in my town. Good for when you need to pick up a particular type of cable or adapter, or some R/L/C component, or whatever, without waiting a week for it to show up from Digikey or Newark. But I'll admit, I have no idea how they're still in business.

I disagree. Ratshack sold out its base over time because it lots its innovative drive. It became just another competitor to the cheap big box stores and lost because it's not a big box store. Radio Shack once sold some of the highest quality affordable home audio (yes, it did) and look where it went: RCA and other "brand name" CRAP. That's just one example of how it lost focus.

Radio shack has almost unprecedented community presence. They could offer services, like reflow soldering, act as a front end to an affordable pc board manufacture, and even offer walk-in cnc services. There's like 2500 stores in the US; imagine if you could walk in to a store less than 20 miles from the house, hand them a thumb drive, then stand there with the kid and watch while a cnc machine grinds out a part for you. No better way to get kids interested in this stuff than seeing it done and working hands on.

The first thing I read on their comment page was a guy asking for a switch for his guitar pedal.

They need to return to that niche market and market it well. Look at Lowes or Home Depot, or Napa Auto Parts. You go to Napa or Lowes and usually, the staff is at least of some help. Where the hell do you go for electronics nationally? No, I'm serious! You're out of town and that glass fuse in your laptop's car charger blew, and you're fucked.

Where do you go? When I was a kid, you went to motherfuckin' radio shac

All of the 1000 series were XT Class machines. Yes, a majority of them technically had an 80286 CPU. My Tandy 1000 TL has a 9.15 Mhz 80286, but they only have an 8 bit memory bus,. They have no A20 handler. They cannot create an HMA or UMBs. They are basically 286s won an 8086 motherboard. But if your Tandy says it only has 640 K of RAM, it is lying. it eats 128 K as video RAM. So to get a full 640 K of RAM out of it. the board has to have 768 K. Getting more RAM requires an EMS card, I'm currently trying t

Don't take this the wrong way please. I mean it in the nicest way possible.

However, I am laughing so hard I am tears right now. I remember those times, and my geek friends and I used to snicker at some guy that had a Tandy. Tandy was never in high regard or the coolest system you could own.

So I find it deeply, deeply, hilarious that two posters are trying so hard to restore one.

I wasn't explicit...guess I should have said "On the rack". I remember browsing for parts, not finding the right ones, doing calculations on a TI-something-or-other to figure out what I could fudge using resistance/inductance calculations...whatever. Could usually "get by" with what was on the wall. Plus what they had on the wall gave me...ideas (most of 'em bad, admittedly).

Now? They don't have squat. I don't even go to RS for anything serious....if it isn't a pre-fab disposable, I order off the web

There was a gap of years, where I didn't need anything because I didn't have time to play around with my own electronics. I went back in looking for some little pieces. Don't ask me what. Resistors, switches, relays, or something along those lines. It really hurt to see that they didn't even sell a soldering iron. I asked the guy at the counter. He had been a long time employee, and we had a good chat about it. There was one RS store in the area that had *some* parts.

FORT WORTH, TX—Despite having been on the job for nine months, RadioShack CEO Julian Day said Monday that he still has "no idea" how the home electronics store manages to stay open.

"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."

The retail outlet boasts more than 6,000 locations in the United States, and is known best for its wall-sized displays of obscure-looking analog electronics components and its notoriously desperate, high-pressure sales staff. Nevertheless, it ranks as a Fortune 500 company, with gross revenues of over $4.5 billion and fiscal quarter earnings averaging tens of millions of dollars.

"Have you even been inside of a RadioShack recently?" Day asked. "Just walking into the place makes you feel vaguely depressed and alienated. Maybe our customers are at the mall anyway and don't feel like driving to Best Buy? I suppose that's possible, but still, it's just...weird."

After taking over as CEO, Day ordered a comprehensive, top-down review of RadioShack's administrative operations, inventory and purchasing, suppliers, demographics, and marketing strategies. He has also diligently pored over weekly budget reports, met with investors, taken numerous conference calls with regional managers about "circulars or flyers or something," and even spent hours playing with the company's "baffling" 200-In-One electronics kit. Yet so far none of these things have helped Day understand the moribund company's apparent allure.

"Even the name 'RadioShack'—can you imagine two less appealing words placed next to one another?" Day said. "What is that, some kind of World War II terminology? Are ham radio operators still around, even? Aren't we in the digital age?"

"Well, our customers are out there somewhere, and thank God they are," Day added.

One of Day's theories about RadioShack's continued solvency involves wedding DJs, emergency cord replacement, and off-brand wireless telephones. Another theory entails countless RadioShack gift cards that sit unredeemed in their recipients' wallets. Day has even conjectured that the store is "still coasting on" an enormous fortune made from remote-control toy cars in the mid-1970s.

Day admitted, however, that none of these theories seems particularly plausible.

"I once went into a RadioShack location incognito in order to gauge customer service," Day said. "It was about as inviting as a visit to the DMV. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything I wanted to buy. Finally, I figured I'd pick up some Enercell AA batteries, though truthfully they're not appreciably cheaper than the name brands."

"I know one thing," Day continued. "If Sony and JVC start including gold-tipped cable cords with their products, we're screwed."

In the cover letter to his December 2006 report to investors, "Radio Shack: Still Here In The 21st Century," Day wrote that he had no reason to believe that the coming year would not be every bit as good as years past, provided that people kept on doing things much the same way they always had.

Despite this cheerful boosterism, Day admitted that nothing has changed during his tenure and he doesn't exactly know what he can do to improve the chain.

"I'd like to capitalize on the store's strong points, but I honestly don't know what they are," Day said. "Every location is full of bizarre adapters, random chargers, and old boom boxes, and some sales guy is constantly hovering over you. It's like walking into your grandpa's basement. You always expect to see something cool, but it never delivers."

Added Day: "I may never know the answer. No matter how many times I punch the sales figures into this crappy Tandy desk calculator, it just doesn't add up."

Some time ago Corporate America decided they didn't need any stinkin' American engineers...toooooo expensive...outsource 'em all. RadioShack just followed along and eliminated elementary school for engineers in favor of pre-fab junk for the proles in a "We're a service economy now!".

Shouldn't let Wall Street run a country; they're only in it for themselves.

Frankly, If I wanted a part right away at an exorbitant price, I'd have it shipped overnight express from sparkfun or some other online retailer. Hell it's probably still cheaper. I'm in Canada and Radio Shack as a brand went defunct years ago (bought out by circuit city and forced to rename to the source, then bought out by Bell). I mean, I'll always have the memories of old radio shack with its TRS-80's and Tandy computers or otherwise and remote control cars stacked in a pyramid around christmas, with

It would be nice if they carried a much larger selection of parts. Long ago they found that a large inventory of low value parts took up too much wall space with too little turn. Unfortunately without traffic, the higher margin items didn't sell either.

They pretty much lost me when they became another mall toy store and cell phone shop.

If they would guarantee stocking all the common standard resistor values and capacitor values and most of the common IC's and transistors, then a hobbyist won't start elsewhere because the local shop is unlikely to carry a full inventory.

How hard is it to have in stock resistors of the 1, 2.2, 2.7, 3,3 , 4.7, 6.8, and 9.1 values in most multiplier values in 1/4 and 1/2 watt sizes?A lack of semiconductors is their greatest downfall. They have maybe a dozen IC's in stock in the lines of the common 555 and little else.The transistor selection is very thin. The most common small signal transistors are absent. 2SC1815 or a 2N249 are scarce.

If you want parts to build an interface to drive a sprinkler valve for robotics from an Arduino, there is nothing that would do the job. Power Mosfets for building any kind of H bridge for robotics is not in stock.

Other stores and online are about the only place to get those parts anymore. Radio Shack's failure has given Mouser a huge market. Mouser is not as convenient for a quick pick up of some 4.7K resistors and other small orders so Radio Shack is missing out on the electronics convenience store they used to be.

Known about this for about a month now, it's been a very badly kept secret with the ground floor guys at RS. From what I've gathered, it's the new CEOs push to really get back to what drew people to the store in the first place -- the "Oooh, neat" factor. How they execute it, however, is still up in the air; most RSs are dinosaurs in terms of getting new product in / clearing out old product. My experience with them was mostly replacing/repacking stuff that had its casing yellowed because they've been in th

There are already store(s) in my area that are filling the small and dwindling niche that Radio Shack once filled. They're farther away and few in number. Us old-timer tinkerers aren't likely to ever go back when we still recall how they so eagerly abandoned us when they thought the big bucks laid elsewhere.

Anyone remember Dow Radio in Pasadena, CA? I wonder if its successor is still there.

I had great memories of Radio Shack. I could go in there, and talk to a guy who knew the difference between a relay and a resistor, and knew what the funny coloured bands were used for.
Little by little, the stuff I used for my projects left the store to be replaced by the same crap you can buy at any other of 100 stores.
The people that knew what they were doing were replaced by people who really had no clue, and could have been selling burgers or mini-skirts, it really didn't matter.
The final insult

I was mainly building digital and digital-analog circuits... so I'd go into Radio Shack and some sales guy would approach. (This happened not just once, but many times, seemingly a different salesperson each time.) I'd tell him I was looking for another Quad 4011 CMOS NAND Gate or a particular transistor or some such, and he'd get a blank look on his face. I'd say, "I know where they are" and go get them.

I admit that was years ago. But the funny thing was, not very long after that I applied for a job at one of the local Radio Shacks, and a little while later received a letter in the mail telling me I was not qualified for the job. I was not sure whether to be upset over the unjust insult, or laugh at the hypocrisy of it all.

But I think that was one of the big things that killed the store. They had a policy of hiring people who didn't know squat about DIY stuff. Instead they tried to sell stereo equipment and cell phones and Christmas toys. But that's really not what they wanted -- or needed -- to do. Everybody else was already doing that stuff.

I would love to see Radio Shack get back to its DIY roots. This time around maybe they can sell Arduinos and 3D printers. Heck... people are already selling machines that are 3D printers and CNC milling machines put together. It doesn't get much better than that. I want one.

I would love to see Radio Shack get back to its DIY roots. This time around maybe they can sell Arduinos and 3D printers. Heck... people are already selling machines that are 3D printers and CNC milling machines put together. It doesn't get much better than that. I want one.

PCBs would be awesome. Upload the design and go pick up the boards a week later. They could get enough volume to bring prototype-run prices way down.

And sell essential tools, which includes things like reflow stations these days. And ribbon cable kits, tools and all.

Mod up. I think that's an idea that is worthy of telling them about. Currently, most folks are getting their prototype PCBs done in China. That could go a long way to bringing it back local, which would be a Good Thing.

Personally, if I'm doing "rapid prototyping", I'd pay $30 for a board done in 2 days (overnight, anyone?) rather than $5 or $10 for something I might get back in a month.

In fact -- thinking about your idea -- they could purchase rights to some good PCB software, or adopt one of the better open-source programs, some of which are very good, and offer it free to their customers. Then they could say "give us the file in xxx format and we'll have it for you in 2 days". Or overnight, or whatever. I agree: awesome.

If this works, then soon, I expect a return of The Free Battery Card (one free per month for you youngsters).I still have 2 punches left on mine, I hope I can find it.After that they can bring back the tube testers.

The "Onion" article aside;) I hope that it isn't too little, too late... despite all indications that it may well be.

The resurgence of people tinkering is an encouraging sign. Of course, there are still plenty of Ham Radio Operators out there. Yeah, a LOT of them are "Appliance Ops", but there are still those of us out there that *DO* enjoy tinkering! Here is proof!:)http://www.mymorninglight.org.nyud.net/ham/ [nyud.net] (My Ham Radio site, Coralized for Slashdot protection)

You want geek creds, you need to inspire people. Be the place where parents want to take their kids because they have a chance to learn something besides the best "fatality" moves. Think about offering classes. Have homebrew stuff displayed in-store so people can see what they can build. Embrace the niche.

Luckily for my area there are stores like JB Saunders [jbsaunders.com] to fill the void that Radio Shack left long ago. From now on I go out of my way to give them business in order to help foster a local business community. Plus they have boatloads of ridiculously useful stuff anytime I need it and I don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money for an overpriced HDMI/USB3.0/whatever cable when I need it.

First, SparkFun [sparkfun.com] has a hugely better selection than the local Rat Shack ever did. Second, OK, so you decide to shift focus. Where are you going to get the people to staff these places? You can't throw a few ICs on a wall display and expect the mouthbreather at the front desk to be able to help with it. I'd honestly rather buy from a vending machine than deal with the kid who's trying to upsell me to a gold-plated breadboard, and would I like an iPod case with that? Finally, prices, prices, prices! The cat ate the charger to my wife's laptop. I found a replacement through the manufacturer's website for $50, and from eBay for $16. Rat Shack only stocked a universal (read: Soviet styling with crap specs) unit for $80.

So how's this supposed to work? They're not going to outstock online stores or other established local specialty shops. They don't have a competent sales force (and probably can't get one, because people worth having probably wouldn't be caught dead working there). I can't imagine that they'll ever set reasonable price points. Nah, they're dead to me - and apparently to almost everyone else. The "Radio Shack" brand is crap, and I don't think they can salvage it. I think their best best is to throw it away and launch a giant rebranding and "we used to suck and we're honest about that but we're better now" blitz.

Where are you going to get the people to staff these places? You can't throw a few ICs on a wall display and expect the mouthbreather at the front desk to be able to help with it.

The local electronic hobby store staffs their store with engineering students. First years and second years are rarely looked for in engineering roles and yet have more than enough knowledge to sell a wide range of components.

It's refreshing to ask someone where they keep their logic chips and have them reply with TTL or CMOS.

I wonder if they will partner with Arduino (and Open source) to not only sell parts but sell potential DIYers on the CONCEPT, by making available cool and low barrier to entry projects. Sort of like Heathkit used to do way back when.

Fry's Electronics demonstrates the direction that Radio Shack could have taken to survive...hell, Tandy's failed Incredible Universe store in San Diego was purchased and converted to a very successful Fry's store. To be successful Radio Shack would have had to be run by people who understand the needs and desires of today's techno-geek. Like most older technology companies Radio Shack came to be run by people who neither understood how to satisfy this niche market nor had the desire to do so. Instead they

I am 40(mumble) years old and it's been 20 years since they've had anything worth looking at in their Potemkin Village of a so-called electronics DIY store. And I'm being generous there.

Up here in the Providence/Boston corridor, there is a store called You-Do-It Electronics in Needham MA. You can get/anything/, really. If you ask nicely, I suppose they can find plutonium to power your radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

Radio Shack is going to have to beat them for me to step foot in one of their sto

Before my time, but I'm assuming Radio Shack got its start servicing radio amateurs.

During my time (80's), radios were a "solved problem," but there were at least three new markets. First, in the pre-IBM PC days, everyone had to make their own RS-232 and printer cables because every computer had a different pin-out. Even if a commercial one was available, it was often more expensive (like $30) compared to the parts (like $10). Remember, this was the 80's, so multiply those prices by 3. ($90 for a pre-made cable vs. $30 for making it yourself). Second, terrestrial TV was still huge and Radio Shack was the most convenient place to get TV antennas, both indoor and out, and all the associated cabling and accessories, including rotators, bulk cable and crimpers. Third, for those of us early early adopters of home theater, Radio Shack was the place to get A/V patch cables.

So what should Radio Shack be selling now?

Well, computer and A/V cables are "solved problems" and available at Wal-Mart. Radio Shack should be focusing on the next bleeding edge consumer technologies -- the ones that are still sold in pieces and parts instead of all-in-one solutions. They could catch the tail end of home video security. There are a lot of cheap turn-key solutions, but there's still some special applications that call for pieces & parts: wide-angle, night-vision, motion detection, high-end PC capture cards, etc.

They could serve the homebrew robotics market. Right now, Asia is dominating advances in robotics -- we need some robot tinkerers in the U.S. just as the U.S. had for automobiles a century ago.

Finally, Radio Shack desperately needs to update its inventory for electronics tinkerers rather than using SKUs from 1980. Over the past 30 years, oscilloscope prices have fallen through the floor and are now well within Radio Shack price ranges. The world has moved beyond hex-AND chips. Radio Shack should be selling FPGA starter kits.

It may be that a metropolitan area can't support more than one or two such Radio Shacks that serve tinkerers. Perhaps Radio Shack needs to have a limited number of "Super Radio Shacks". But as with Micro Center, there are times where same-day pick-up is needed and even overnight delivery from the Internet is not fast enough.

I really used to enjoy going into a Radio Shack store and check out all the different parts and build stuff. Then, they zapped it all, turning it into a cell phone / crap place. I've managed to find a few of their stores that still have managers that give a *hit an still carry resisters an such, but it's rare.I haven't been in one of their stores since like 2002, and that was cause they had ladder line for antenna's.

Impress me Radio Shack, and carry all the stuff you used to.. and you'll get

The prices they charge for common cables is astronomical. When I see some poor unsuspecting person wander in and ask for something, it's usually for something they are going to end up paying $50+ for, when it should be 20 tops. To me this seems to be their only repeat customers. Old people, who want things handed to them without them knowing anything about it. I also remember back in late 04 wandering into one needing a DVI = VGA adapter, figuring they would be the place that would definitely have them... N

I think recreation is a key to their having some draw. Perhaps Radio Shack can embrace Maker Faire types of projects and reserve small parts of stores for interesting kits to build, carry the magazine, and even hold store seminars on recreational building. Alternatively they can continue to carry only cell phones, plastic crap toys, and go down in history like a dinosaur trapped in tar.

A year or so ago I took on some projects that had me cruising for parts, so I hit Radio Shack expecting to be dissapointed again, when I found that section had been cleaned up, and new display racks put in since I last looked.

I noticed some cool things, not the old selection, but clearly some newer merchandise, even a BASIC STAMP kit. Though, they didn't seem to have the center tapped transformers out, similarly the clerk was more into cell phone contracts and new jack about what I was buying but... he was

Arduino is a good suggestion. I would add some basic Olimex ARM7TDMI boards to this, maybe BeagleBoard kits with Linux on SD cards. Maybe a basic FPGA kit. As comprehensive kits with everything needed to get up and running using a PC. Install software, plug in the power, open any of the example projects, and hit go. A basic DSP kit would be popular too I'm sure. A DYI digital/networked/SD card picture frame that runs Linux/Android with a touch display. It's not about money either; RS has never been t

After watching that video, I am sick and tired of being referred to as a consumer, and not a customer. Unless we are in an economics lecture, or a corporate board room, I think it's truly impolite and frankly condescending to refer to someone that tries to make regular use of your goods and services as a consumer.

Totally agree. In addition, people who build things are producers, not consumers.